The trajectory and impact of all Other Half Brewing has accomplished since their founding in 2014 can be tough to wrap your head around. From their humble beginnings in Brooklyn’s Carroll Gardens neighborhood, to potentially having four locations in operation before the end of the year, this passion project, focused on quality first, continues to push the limits of what brewing can be in America.
Their story starts with co-founder and Portland Oregon native Sam Richardson studying Fermentation Science at Oregon State, before heading to Seattle for a stint at The Ram, then back to Portland to brew at Pyramid Brewing for three years. While on a fateful trip, visiting his wife’s family in New York, Sam applied to brew for Greenpoint Beer Works in the Clinton Hill neighborhood of Brooklyn and got the job.
There he struck up a friendship with future co-founder Matt Monahan, the two brewing small batches on Greenpoint’s pilot system. With Matt having a background as a chef and an interest in homebrewing, he was dreaming up something bigger with third founder, fellow chef and fellow DC native, Andrew Burman. With an opportunity for Sam to brew up 4 beers to showcase during a pop-up restaurant with Matt & Andrew, the genesis of Other Half became manifest.
After a year-and-a-half of New York red-tape and a barebones buildout in a warehouse adjacent to the Gowanus Expressway, Other Half Brewing made a name for themselves early via their restaurant and taproom connections, quickly amassing hundreds of accounts within miles of their new operation. Richardson’s early draft-only creations included Other Half IPA (a West Coast IPA with Cascade, Centennial, Chinook & Simcoe hops), a Cascadian Dark Ale, and an Imperial Stout.
Once New York law changed, the same year they opened in 2014, breweries were now allowed direct-to-consumer sales of packaged beer. This quickly led to the opening of their first taproom at their original production space and doing limited canning runs. Combine this new reality with the arrival of their first New England-style IPA, All Green Everything (a New York City first), a distinct ground-breaking approach to brand marketing through can art, and a slew of collaborations across the US (including Monkish’s first Hazy IPA in 2016), they became a headlining East Coast brewery leading a paradigm shift toward new flavors in an exploding industry.
Despite their rise in popularity, including record long can release lines and ever increasing demand, the minds at Other Half have always focused on beer they enjoy drinking, still make them in reasonably sized batches, all with a nose for aromatics and a taste for pillowy mouthfeel. This success in flavor creation can be attributed to their meticulous approach to hop selection, steady hop contracts of the finest varietals, as well as that culinary mindset that enables them to push the envelope of innovation to this day.
Their continued success enabled them to open another taproom in Brooklyn in 2017, then an innovation brewery and taproom called Finger Lakes, located in Rochester, New York in 2018. Presently, the brewery has two new locations in the works – one in the Williamsburg neighborhood called Domino Park, and a second in Monahan and Burman’s native Washington D.C. (Ivy City neighborhood), both slated to open within “the next couple of months.”
We’ve been lucky to have a relationship with Other Half Brewing over the past few years, primarily manifesting itself in limited draft coming to Portland for special events. Today we’re excited to announce the arrival of six different limited offerings in cans from Other Half, the first time they’ve been distributed in Oregon!
You’ll see these beers arriving at bottle shops in the Portland-metro area today and tomorrow, with most hitting shelves starting tomorrow. Be sure to keep an eye on your local shop’s social media accounts and our Instagram Story for more details on times & locations for availability. Below is a list of the cans we’ve received:
- Double Dry Hopped Double Citra Daydream – an Imperial Oat Cream IPA. It’s blasted with Citra pellets and finished off with Citra Lupulin powder, on a bed of pillowy oats (8.5%).
- Double Dry Hopped Forever Ever – our highly hopped, low ABV crusher with Amarillo, Mosaic, Azacca and Citra. This batch has been double dry hopped with Citra and Mosaic lupulin powder and Azacca pellets (4.7%).
- Double Dry Hopped Green City – Double Dry Hopped version of our 7.0% IPA brewed with Citra, Centennial, and Simcoe.
- Double Dry Hopped Oh…Forever – our Citra, Galaxy and Motueka Imperial IPA finally gets the DDH treatment (8%).
- Double Dry Hopped Space Diamonds – Imperial IPA takes Space Diamonds, our all Galaxy IIPA and crushes it with another massive dose of Galaxy hops (8.5%).
- Double Dry Hopped Superfun! – DDH Pale Ale. Even more fun for your mouth with even more Galaxy and El Dorado in the dry hop (4.2%).
The content of this article was sourced from the following publications: Other Half Brewing, Good Beer Hunting, Craft Beer and Brewing & their podcast with Sam Richardson, Grub Street, Serious Eats.
Day One Distribution 